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Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band
In conjunction with Madison Poet Laureate Emeritus Fabu Phillis Carter and jazz pianist Jane Reynolds' May 10th performance at the Kennedy Center, “Remember Me: Mary Lou Williams in Poetry and Music”, Café CODA will show the award-winning documentary film, “Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band,” followed at 5:00pm by a “watch party” for the live stream of their Kennedy Center performance (part of the Center's 2025 Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival).
Director Carol Bash's film, https://itvs.org/films/mary-lou-williams/, traces the life and musical development of the genius jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and educator Mary Lou Williams, whose career spanned and influenced virtually every jazz era in the 20th century. During the era when Jazz was the nation's popular music, Williams was one of its greatest innovators. As both a pianist and composer, she was a font of daring and creativity who helped shape the sound of 20th century America. And like the dynamic, turbulent nation in which she lived, Williams seemed to redefine herself with every passing decade, prompting Duke Ellington to call her "perpetually contemporary."
From child prodigy to "Boogie-Woogie Queen" to groundbreaking composer to mentoring some of the greatest musicians of all time, Mary Lou Williams never ceased to astound those who heard her play. But away from the piano, Williams was a woman in a "man's world," a black person in a "whites only" society, an ambitious artist who dared to be different, and who struggled against the imperatives of being a "star." Above all, she did not fit the (still) prevailing notions of where genius comes from or what it looks like. Time and again, she pushed back against a world that said, "You can't" and said, "I can." It nearly cost her everything.
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